Muni Fiber and Politics

Mon Jul 21 16:46:27 UTC 2014

There was a muni case in my neck of the woods a couple of years ago.
Comcast spent an order of magnitude more than the municipality but
still lost.

Anyway, follow the money.  "Blackburn’s largest career donors are ..
PACs affiliated with AT&T ... ($66,750) and Comcast ... ($36,600). ...
Blackburn has also taken $56,000 from the National Cable &
Telecommunications Association."

http://www.muninetworks.org/content/media-roundup-blackburn-amendment-lights-newswires

In other news, FIOS has gone symmetrical.
http://newscenter.verizon.com/corporate/news-articles/2014/07-21-fios-upload-speed-upgrade/

On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Over the last decade, 19 states have made it illegal for municipalities
> to own fiber networks -- encouraged largely, I am told, by Verizon and
> other cable companies/MSOs[1].
>
> Verizon, of course, isn't doing any new FiOS deployments, per a 2010
> press release[2].
>
> FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has been making noises lately that he wants the FCC
> to preempt the field on this topic, making such deployments legal.
>
> Congressional Republicans think that's a bad idea:
>
> http://www.vox.com/2014/7/20/5913363/house-republicans-and-obamas-fcc-are-at-war-over-city-owned-internet
>
> [ and here's the backgrounder on the amendment:
>
> http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/blackburn-bill-would-block-fcc-preemption/132468 ]
>
> While I generally try to avoid bringing up topics on NANOG that are political;
> this one seems to be directly in our wheelhouse, and unavoidably political.
> My apologies in advance; let's all try to be grownups, shall we?
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
>
> [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
> [2] https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Again-Confirms-FiOS-Expansion-is-Over-118949
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
> Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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